CMJ Special Issue on HCI — Call for Submissions

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Computer Music Journal (MIT Press) is calling for submissions for a special issue on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in music, guest edited by Michael Gurevich of the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast.

The availability of powerful, low-cost sensors and embedded hardware that can control real-time audio has facilitated the rapid growth of digital computer interfaces used in music performance. The New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference is already coming up on its 10th year since its humble beginning as a workshop within the 2001 CHI conference. NIME has become a discipline in its own right, one whose enthusiastic growth has rendered the CHI platform an inadequate container; however, as a primarily practice-led discipline NIME has as great a potential as ever to inform, and be informed by, HCI.

Accordingly, this issue will step back and view interactive music performance through the lens of HCI. Submissions should report on original research in HCI or allied disciplines (design, cognitive psychology, mechanical engineering, etc.) that is materially relevant to computer music, or vice versa. Papers should make this connection explicit, and therefore co-authored submissions between HCI and computer music researchers or practitioners are particularly encouraged.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

-novel interaction techniques
-design theory or frameworks
-human performance
-evaluation methods
-tangible representations of musical parameters
-audience cognition of interactive performance
-design case studies
-performers’ or composers’ reports that relate to HCI

Submissions that document a design, performance or composition must clearly advance a theory that is applicable to wider practice.

Submissions will be subject to peer review and should be received by
September 30, 2009.

Refer to the manuscript guidelines at
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/page/sub/comj

csound~ 1.0.6

csound~ 1.0.6 is now available at:

http://www.davixology.com/csound~.html

What’s new:

In MacOSX, [csound~] will accept Max style paths as well as POSIX style
paths.  [dp.pathconvert] is no longer necessary.

Added “open” message that does the same thing as double-clicking on the
[csound~] external; it opens the current csd or orc/sco file(s).

Added “run” message that allows you to execute command line commands.

Help patch has been improved and expanded.

Audacity Update 1.3.8 (Beta)

The Audacity Team is pleased to announce the release of Audacity 1.3.8 (Beta) for Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download). It contains a number of significant improvements, plus some bug  fixes. Highlights include:

 * VST Effects now display in GUI mode by default

 * Updated Nyquist implementation

 * Improvements to Equalization, Noise Removal, Truncate Silence, Click Track and effects chains

 * Improved Plot Spectrum analysis and new preferences for Spectrograms

 * Record more than 16 channels (hardware/drivers permitting)

 * New “Mixer Board” view with per-track VU meters

 * AMR NB export support via the optional FFmpeg library (http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=FAQ:Installation_and_Plug-Ins#installffmpeg)

 * 32-bit float data over 0 dB handled without clipping

 * Draft Manual/Quick Help included in Windows and Mac installers

 * Faster waveform drawing and better response in multi-track projects

 * Various bug fixes, stability and accessibility improvements

See New in Audacity 1.3.8 (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/features-1.3-a#details) for more on the latest features and fixes.

Note: This release does not support Windows 98 or ME, for which 1.3.7 is still available (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_windows#recdown).